Reading Specialists

It is a pleasure to have your child in our reading group. In order to create a good learning environment, a positive attitude and pride in the students, we feel a classroom expectation plan needs to be in place.

Park Meadows beliefs are based on mutual respect and high expectations. WE TEACH THE CHILDREN TO BE PREPARED, ACCOUNTABLE, RESPONSIBLE/RESPECTFUL AND KIND. Certain behaviors are unacceptable and there are consequences for unacceptable behavior. No student should be denied the right to learn because of the behavior of another student.

Your child will be receiving intervention four days a week for 30 minutes each time. We will be doing a program called SIPPS (Systematic Instruction in Phonological Awareness, Phonics and Sight Words). There will be reading passages that come home nightly for your student to read as part of the program. We ask that you sign and have your student return the passage the following day.  

Students who choose to make appropriate choices and follow the appropriate actions will be rewarded for their appropriate behavior. Examples for positive rewards are positive notes, PARK tickets, and verbal praise.

The Deer Valley Unified School District High Frequency/Irregularly Spelled Word Lists were developed to align with the 2016 Arizona English Language Arts Standards.  The words on the new K-3 lists include sight words from our Reading Street curriculum along with words from the Fry Word Lists - the most commonly used words in reading and writing.

The mastery goal for each grade level is 85% by end of the year.  If a student has mastered the required grade level words with 100% mastery, it is Deer Valley Unified’s expectation that the student be taught and assessed on the next word list.

The Arizona Department of Education: Move On When Reading

Student Links

• Book Adventure: This site offers a free motivational reading program for K-8 students.

• Reading Rockets: This site offers a variety of resources for parents and explanations of current reading practices.

• PBS Educational Games: This site offers educational games for students.

• BBC Broadcasting: This site offers games and activities for K-2 students. It also offers a parent component.

• The Electric Company

• Dolch Sight Word Practice

• Wordle: Be creative with your spelling words or sight words and make a Wordle. 

• Gamequarium

• Starfall: Activities for K-1

• Word World

• I Can Read

• Dolch Sight Word Bingo

• Storyline Online: Listen to books read by famous people. 

Reading Websites

• ABC Mouse: A comprehensive, game-based website your early reader is sure to enjoy.  Try it free for one month.

• Book Adventure: K-8 students can create their own book lists from a list of over 7,000 titles.  Just enter your grade level, what kinds of books you are looking for, and what you like to read about.  You get a list of recommended titles that you can print out and take with you to the library!

• FunBrain: Free educational games, online books, and comics for kids in age preschool through grade 8.  More than 100 interactive games and many popular books and comics, including Diary of a Wimpy Kid, to read along with.

• Go Noodle: Although intended for the classroom, this website provides tons of ideas for brain breaks to help students who need to refocus after sitting still and concentrating for an extended period, or a pick-me-up when homework is frustrating or dull.

• JumpStart: Transforms math, reading, and critical thinking lessons into adventures!  Students take an interactive, 3D journey through JumpStart World that is designed to develop skills based on grade level standards. 

• PBS Kids: Educational games, videos and activities featuring your favorite PBS characters.  Information for parents, too.

• Reading Rockets: A complete website with information about every aspect of beginning reading

• ReadWorks: Free, research-based, K-6 resource offers a huge library of fiction and non-fiction passages and question sets to develop fluency and comprehension.

• Starfall: Lots of fun reading games to sharpen phonics skills and build confidence.  From ABCs to fluency and comprehension, with lots of special, holiday-themed activities as well.

• Storyline Online: Streaming video of famous people reading great children's literature aloud.  Presented by the Screen Actors' Guild.  Among many others, you can see and hear Betty White reading Harry the Dirty Dog or Ernest Borgnine presenting The Rainbow Fish.  Amazing and completely free!

• Storynory: A new audio story every week since November, 2005!  Printed text allows students follow along as the story is read aloud.

• Teach Your Monster to Read: Beginning readers go on a journey through space, using their phonemic awareness, phonics, and reading skills to earn prizes as they progress through the levels of the game.

Student Reading Apps

• The 15 Best Apps for Learning to Read: This list from the Early Childhood Education Zone website, was complied in December of 2016.

• 9 Great Learn to Read Apps for Kids: A list of motivating websites reviewed by Common Sense Media.

• 6 Great Reading Apps for Kids: A short list of reading apps from Scholastic.com.

• 8 Free iPad Apps for Young Learners: From the Educational Technology and Mobile Learning blog,  a list of some of the best free iPad apps that will help kids learn how to write letters, develop phonics, and sharpen their reading skills.

• Reading Rockets Recommendations: From Reading Rockets, a list of great aps, some free but most at a small price, that make reading practice fun and exciting.

• 10 iPad Apps for Teaching Kids to Read: From How Stuff Works, a short explanation of the unique role tablets and smart phones can play in building early reading skills  and a list of ten recommended apps.

• 20 iPad Apps to Teach Elementary Reading: From TeachThought.com, a list of apps to turn screen time into learning time.

• 50 Popular Apps for Struggling Readers and Writers: The recommended apps are divided into five categories: Helpful Tools, Fundamentals, Reading, Writing, and Spelling.

• Excellent iPad Apps for Reading Disability: According to the Educational Technology and Mobile Learning site, these apps, handpicked from the Onlinecolleges list of 50, will be of greatest help to struggling readers.

Click on a link below to read the complete ELA standards for your child's grade level from the Arizona Department of Education website

• Kindergarten ELA Standards
• First Grade ELA Standards
• Second Grade ELA Standards
• Third Grade ELA Standards

All kindergarten through third grade students are assessed using the Dynamic Indicator of Basic Early Literacy Skills - DIBELS - three times a year: in August, December, and May.

What skills are measured by DIBELS and why are they important? The critical skills necessary for successful beginning reading include: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The DIBELS measures assess students on four of these five critical skills, which are often referred to as the “Big Ideas” of reading.